BLAST: CORRELATIONS IN THE COSMIC FAR-INFRARED BACKGROUND AT 250, 350, AND 500 mum REVEAL CLUSTERING OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4 (Canada)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, 5 The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA (United Kingdom)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of Miami, 1320 Campo Sano Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146 (United States)
- Instituto Nacional de AstrofIsica Optica y Electronica (INAOE), Aptdo. Postal 51 y 72000 Puebla (Mexico)
- Astrophysics Group, Imperial College London, Blackett Laboratory, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA (United Kingdom)
- University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, Physics Department, Box 23343, UPR station, San Juan (Puerto Rico)
We detect correlations in the cosmic far-infrared background due to the clustering of star-forming galaxies in observations made with the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, at 250, 350, and 500 mum. We perform jackknife and other tests to confirm the reality of the signal. The measured correlations are well fitted by a power law over scales of 5'-25', with DELTAI/I = 15.1% +- 1.7%. We adopt a specific model for submillimeter sources in which the contribution to clustering comes from sources in the redshift ranges 1.3 <= z <= 2.2, 1.5 <= z <= 2.7, and 1.7 <= z <= 3.2, at 250, 350, and 500 mum, respectively. With these distributions, our measurement of the power spectrum, P(k{sub t}heta), corresponds to linear bias parameters, b = 3.8 +- 0.6, 3.9 +- 0.6, and 4.4 +- 0.7, respectively. We further interpret the results in terms of the halo model, and find that at the smaller scales, the simplest halo model fails to fit our results. One way to improve the fit is to increase the radius at which dark matter halos are artificially truncated in the model, which is equivalent to having some star-forming galaxies at z >= 1 located in the outskirts of groups and clusters. In the context of this model, we find a minimum halo mass required to host a galaxy is log(M{sub min}/M{sub sun}) = 11.5{sup +0.4}{sub -0.1}, and we derive effective biases b{sub eff} = 2.2 +- 0.2, 2.4 +- 0.2, and 2.6 +- 0.2, and effective masses log(M{sub eff}/M{sub odot})=12.9+-0.3, 12.8 +- 0.2, and 12.7 +- 0.2, at 250, 350 and 500 mum, corresponding to spatial correlation lengths of r{sub 0} = 4.9, 5.0, and 5.2+-0.7 h{sup -1}Mpc, respectively. Finally, we discuss implications for clustering measurement strategies with Herschel and Planck.
- OSTI ID:
- 21392538
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 707, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/707/2/1766; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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